“Low-content” is an official KDP category with its own rules. Ticking the box when it applies is mandatory; ticking it when it doesn’t limits your book for nothing. Here is how to tell.
What KDP calls low-content
KDP defines low-content books as books with minimal or no content on the interior pages, generally repetitive and designed to be filled in by the reader. Its examples: notebooks, planners, diaries and journals, prompt journals, logbooks, coupon books, score cards, crafting templates and blank sheet music.
What isn’t low-content
KDP lists these as not low-content: novels, non-fiction, puzzle books, coloring books, photography books, sheet music, manuals, textbooks and children’s books. A coloring book or a word-search book is published like any other book.
What the low-content box changes
- ISBN: publish without an ISBN or with your own; the free KDP ISBN isn’t offered. Without an ISBN, KDP prints a barcode in a 2 × 1.2 in white box on the back cover, so keep that area clear.
- Look Inside: not available without an ISBN, so buyers can’t preview the interior (A+ Content can show it instead).
- Expanded Distribution: not available. It also excludes journals, notebooks, planners and calendars and coloring books, whatever the ISBN.
- No series, no pre-orders, no Kindle edition.
The box is in the Categories section of the paperback or hardcover details, and the ISBN choice can’t be changed after publishing.
Medium-content books
“Medium-content” isn’t a KDP term; sellers use it for books between the two: guided journals with a different prompt on every page, activity books, workbooks, puzzle books. Because their pages carry real, non-repeating content, KDP treats them as regular books: ISBN (the free one is fine), Look Inside, series allowed.
Which one is your book?
- Every page repeats the same template (lines, grid, tracker, planner spread)? Low-content: tick the box.
- Pages carry unique content: prompts, puzzles, illustrations, text? Not low-content: publish with an ISBN.
In kdpbook, only planner, logbook & notebooks are flagged as low-content; the guided journal, puzzle book and coloring book types are regular books, and the export sheet tells you which box to tick.